BY CUTCOMMON
When composer Ade Vincent and singer-songwriter Lior started their latest commission for the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra, they wrote a list of emotions they feel while composing. That list sparked the basis of their collaborative piece To Be Human, which is itself about the process of making art, and the feelings that become part of the journey.
In writing music that’s infused with personal experiences, Ade also thinks about the role of AI in the future of music — and why living composers can’t be replaced with technology.
In a statement about the event, MCO artistic director Sophie Rowell (pictured below) called To Be Human “a thought-provoking contemporary piece of art”. Now, MCO will premiere this new song cycle for solo tenor voice, electric guitar, and orchestra alongside works by Grieg, Rebecca Clarke, and Manuel de Falla.
Ade tells CutCommon about the commission and how he worked with ARIA-winning Lior to explore these themes through song.
Hi Ade! Tell us how you came to connect with MCO for the commission.
This one came to me via Lior. We’ve worked together a few times, and usually one of us is approached to write something, and they then expand it to a collaboration.
The last one we worked on together was an electro-orchestral piece that I was commissioned for, and wanted to add Lior’s voice and creative ideas to it. This time, the MCO sought out Lior to write and perform something, and he wanted to expand it to include me.
How did you feel about working with Lior again?
He’s a joy to work with. It’s a privilege to write for his singing voice. There’s writing for voice, and then there’s writing for a specific voice, and his is incredible. He’s got clear creative ideas but is also flexible and open to trying things.
Talk us through the commission and what it’s all about.
The piece evokes the experience of the artist during the creation of a work of art — music, painting, anything. Before starting, we both independently wrote a list of the emotions we go through when creating a major artwork — long piece, album etc. They were very similar lists, and they formed the basis of the seven movements.
What was interesting was then subsequently experiencing the emotions, almost exactly as listed, during the process of writing the music that aimed to conjure up those very emotions. So it ended up being something of a musical diary – showing how we felt about the process while we were living it.
Of course, it’s not quite so linear or simple, but we both feel it does capture the human experience of the creative process.
As the work is so much about your creative process, how would you describe the process of writing To Be Human?
A lot of it looks like collaboration by correspondence. Most of the writing takes place on our own, with regular discussion in between. We don’t partition the areas into melody/voice and then strings – Lior also contributes compositional ideas, and I contribute melodies/songs.
The only area we partitioned in this one was lyrics – these are all Lior’s. We also do a few co-writing sessions, and these are important.
The final movement came about by me playing some chords on the piano at Lior’s house, when we were on a break from something else, and him singing along a melody absent-mindedly. We knew there was something there immediately, so we captured it very sketchily on a phone, and over the following days neither of us could get it out of our heads. It was one of those moments where a piece of music seems to spark to life out of nowhere. It was a totally different direction to what we had planned, but the idea was so strong it selected itself.
These are the moments you can’t plan for, but if you trust the process they will come around at some stage. Then we went to work on it by correspondence again. Lior wrote some lyrics, I wrote a chorus, Lior wrote an outro, and so on – the hard work that turns the spark into a piece of music.
In a statement about this event, you said you were interested in AI as a tool for artists. Yet, your music shows the importance of human experiences in the creation of music. How do you balance those two seemingly opposing ideas?
Great question – this is what inspired the piece. I think that the two ideas you mention are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Humans can use AI as creative tools in interesting ways, while still providing a human connection for the audience. I think this is a lot of what we’ll see in the near future, and I foresee a lot of interesting art created this way.
It’s where a human author is absent that the question becomes harder to answer. It’s an open question as to whether or not the end justifies the means: does it matter to an audience how a piece of art was created, or does it stand in isolation?
My instinct is that it depends on the context. […] I suspect that if generative AI could write me a new book in the exact style of a favourite author, in an instant I would be less interested in reading it, because I know there’s not a human on the other side of the exchange — but I might be wrong about this. And in a way, there is a human on the other side: even if they didn’t pen the words, the AI has been trained on their works, so this complicates things.
In another scenario, what if I didn’t know? Or found out after the fact? Does it change the reading in retrospect?
These questions are what prompted the piece. It’s intended as a provocative statement to start conversations. It says: here is everything that goes into a work from a human’s perspective – here is the humanity behind a work of art. What if we take that away? How do you feel about that? Would it change your experience?
I’m not a believer in pushing against the oncoming tide of technology. I think it should be embraced and used. But I also think these questions should be considered by society as we navigate the tide.
In general, I’m optimistic. While I think that entirely AI-produced art will have a place, particularly serving a functional purpose — and will replace humans in areas, which will be difficult for some — I suspect that most people will continue to seek out human connection via art, and that artists won’t be replaced in many contexts.
So how can we hear the “human” in your composition? How can we hear the Ade and the Lior? What are some features of this music that only you could have composed?
It continues the style we’ve developed over our previous pieces. We both work across several genres, mostly in popular contemporary and in classical/concert music, and we’re interested in writing music that draws on both these styles.
There are movements that are essentially folk songs that are orchestrated to include strings, and some that were string sketches that we added voice or guitar to, but most sit between, using both approaches at once.
Lior’s melody writing and singing voice is highly idiosyncratic, with Eastern inflections and chromaticism. I like to write music comprising accessible building blocks that are expanded through adventurous use of instrumental colours and techniques. Movement 1, for example, uses the strings essentially as percussion instruments – they loop percussive grooves, while Lior sings twisting melodies that are easy to grasp but full of interesting inflections.
Within this context, where do you see the future of composition in an AI world?
What I’d like to see is what I’m very confident will happen: composers will do a huge range of varied and interesting things with AI — things we can’t conceive of.
Composers don’t want to be constrained by boundaries. I lecture in composition, and many of my students take the brief I give them and then look at how they can break it, or circumvent it, or do something unusual – it’s the nature of people who are drawn to creative pursuits.
I think composers may need to be creative to find ways not to be totally replaced in some contexts — for example, music for advertising. This will look like working with it rather than against it.
At the end of the day, humans still have the final call — so how would you like to see the humans of Australia support composers in this unprecedented arts landscape? Is it about commissioning more human composers; audiences advocating for human-produced work?
For the most part, I like to think about this in terms of what we as artists can do to demand relevance, rather than relying on others to intervene. There may be intervention needed to safeguard against exploitation – actors who have their likeness captured, for example, leading to only a small amount of work and then simulated versions replacing them. This is similar to any AI that is trained on existing art – we may need to put something in place to avoid artists being exploited.
If careers in the arts aren’t viable, or are significantly less viable — let’s face it: no one starts a career in the arts for the money — the quality of art will diminish. But that said, there is also an onus on artists to make things that society values enough to want to see. So I think that arts organisations like MCO should keep commissioning humans, assuming humans do work that is interesting enough to demand the attention.
Some might think that places the burden too heavily on artists, but I would prefer to take control of the situation rather than let the responsibility sit elsewhere. My approach to this in the last few months was to ask provocative questions via an attractive and interesting piece of music – this is what we’re aiming to do with To Be Human.
Any final thoughts about your music with Lior?
We’re both very proud of this piece – it’s the third we’ve co-written after Hours I Have Never Known for Tinalley String Quartet, and the electro-orchestral Forever Singing Winter into Spring for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.
The Melbourne Chamber Orchestra has been fantastic to work with – Sophie Rowell is doing a great job overseeing things there, and she is a wonderful player. We’re looking forward to bringing the piece to life.
Experience To Be Human in the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra’s program Of People and Song, touring Victoria from 16-26 November, with performances in Melbourne Recital Centre 23 and 26 November. Full details on the MCO website.
Images supplied. Sophie captured by Laura Manariti.
